


The Worst Thing He Saw

by WriteyMcWriteface



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Bravery, Captured, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'm trying to make you cry basically, Karasuno, Prisoner of War, Prisoners, Soldiers, War, resiliance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 00:07:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17714279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriteyMcWriteface/pseuds/WriteyMcWriteface
Summary: When war breaks out Karasuno is captured and processed by an invading enemy. Part of being processed is the boys being shaved, and Nishinoya always did care so much about his hair.Asahi's perspective.





	The Worst Thing He Saw

When the war was over people would ask Asahi what was the worst thing that he had seen.  
Asahi always gave them the answers they expected to hear. He said the schools being taken hostage, or the people starving in prison camps, or the bombs or the radiation.  
He never told them the real answer, which was when the soldiers shaved off Nishinoya’s hair. 

Everybody heard about the prison camps, and knew, theoretically, of what happened in them. They knew about how everyone was stripped of their clothes and belongings, showered, assigned prison uniforms, and shaved. All to erode their identity as people; to make them a personless herd.  
They knew about it and knew it was awful and real, but it still seemed distant in the way that all stories, no matter how true, seem distant. Words out of someone’s mouth. An awful thing that happened to someone else. God save the souls it happened to; god save the poor, whoever-they-were souls.  
But even though they knew what would happen when Karasuno was processed into the camps, everything still seemed unreal. The things happening were the ideas of things. Too awful to be real.

Most of Asahi’s memories were patchy and blurred, mismatched between his own recollections, his nightmares, and the stories he had read. But some stood out clear as day before him. 

A soldier pressing Hinata, who so wanted to be tall, down on his knees.  
Suga with a bruise above one eye meeting Daichi’s unreadable gaze.  
Ennoshita and Ryuu, side by side, with heads pressed forward by gun barrels on the back of their necks.  
Tsukishima letting Yamaguchi hold his hand. 

Asahi remembered when they had all pulled on their uniforms and stood up in a row by the wall, in a room with corners piled high with cut human hair. He remembered the dust, and the sound of his friends’ breathing. 

The Captain in charge of their processing walked over to stand in front of them. He was an old man with greased-back hair betraying grey at the edges, and the lines from his nose down to the sides of his frowning mouth carved deep by a long, unhappy life. He scanned the team dispassionately.  
He didn’t understand at the time but later Asahi realised what the Captain had been looking for. The shaving was a show designed to break their will, and the man was looking for the boy with the best hair. 

The Captain’s eyes lingered for a moment on Suga, who always had such soft silvery hair, and Asahi’s own ponytail, damp from the shower. However then his gaze settled on Nishinoya. 

In the team line the Libero was standing to Asahi’s right, his hair still propping itself upright despite its dousing and his blonde lock curled defiant over his fierce expression. The Captain looked at Nishinoya, then at a bulky looking private. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the libero, and the private went forward and grabbed his arm, twisting it up behind him and marching him forward. Though his muscles were corded tight Nishinoya didn’t make a sound so Asahi flinched for him.  
The bones of his wrist were so small in the private’s hand.  
Nishinoya was forced to his knees facing his team. The private was young and tall and strong and made it look like easy work, but Asahi could tell from how hard Nishinoya’s knees hit the concrete that he was resisting as hard as he could.  
Hinata made a soft noise like a bird. Asahi hoped Kageyama would take care of the little crow, but he couldn’t turn to check. His eyes were locked on Nishinoya’s face. He could see his friend’s teeth where the corner of his mouth had twisted up in a snarl. 

Part of him wished Nishinoya was more like himself; that he knew when to just stop fighting. But the rest of him knew that would never happen, and that it would be the worst thing in the world if it did.

The Captain walked to where Nishinoya knelt and turned to face Karasuno.  
Another soldier, an older one, stepped behind him. Without moving his gaze, he handed an electric razor to the older soldier. Nishinoya try to turn and see what the man was holding but the private twisted the libero’s arm up at an impossible angle and took a rough fistful of hair with his spare hand to hold his head straight. With his neck bent back at a strange angle Asahi could see Nishinoya swallow convulsively, eyes still rolling to try and see what was happening. 

When he couldn’t see the soldier Nishinoya’s eyes snapped back to his team, to Asahi’s left. Asahi was stood beside Suga, and on Suga’s other side stood Daichi; to his right was, of course, the place where Nishinoya usually stood. 

Asahi knew Nishinoya was looking to the team captain. 

If he were Daichi, Asahi didn’t know what sort of face he would make for his friend. He didn’t which muscles to pull and tendons to soften to make something that would make this better. But as he swallowed, hands trembling, all of him feeling sick, he saw Nishinoya get something he needed. Eyes still on Daichi, Nishinoya brought himself under control. His lips pressed into a determined line and his eyes became keener, narrower. More resolved and less rounded by uncertainty.

Asahi was somehow surprised when Nishinoya’s gaze flicked to meet his own, but then he was always kind of surprised when that happened. Nishinoya was a startling sort of individual and his gaze always gave the impression of searchlights finding him suddenly in the dark. 

He tried to do something brave with his face. The corner of Nishinoya’s mouth twitched into…god, into a hint of a smile. Asahi’s alarm at this particular development just tugged that hint a little higher. He had the sense that if they were free, standing on a volleyball court in the middle of a match, Nishinoya would have given him one of his classic ouch-Nishinoya-that-was-too-hard playful shoulder punches.

Asahi breathed out raggedly, and shakily offered a hint of a smile back.  
(This was one of the clear moments Asahi would remember later, would remember for the rest of his life. Nishinoya, held on his knees, and Asahi in line, smiling at each other).  
The corners of Nishinoya’s eyes crinkled into crows feet, like they always did when he was about to laugh. Then the old soldier switched on the clippers, and Nishinoya’s eyes snapped away from Asahi’s and he stood ragged without it. Like a bridge standing uncertainly with some crucial support structure having suddenly crumbled. In the moment between looking at Asahi to straining to see the clippers the libero's expression snapped from warmth to fierce defiance. The clippers buzzed low and insistent like a cicada, and Nishinoya swallowed hard again. 

Then without further ado the old soldier bent and grabbed Nishinoya’s head from the private, and shaved a long stripe of hair off. From his rebellious blonde lock to the back of his thin neck the clippers cleared a rough, bald line. The old soldier held down Nishinoya’s head, exposing the fresh bald line striping through the hair, twisting slightly to one side away from dead center. 

Asahi wanted to see Nishinoya’s face, he wanted to see Nishinoya’s eyes. He’d give anything just to please god let him see Nishinoya’s eyes.

Nishinoya’s shoulders were shaking with fear or tension, Asahi couldn’t tell. Asahi’s scrambling gaze slipped, and he saw how the old soldier was holding his friend. His thick fingers were gripping Nishinoya’s ear so hard it was white. The man was too big and too strong, his hold too tight and uncompromising. Nishinoya couldn’t lift his head.

Now Asahi made a noise. He didn’t mean to, it just came out. It was like he’d taken a volleyball viciously spiked straight to the gut, the violence of the strike forcing air from his lungs and over his vocal cords. He felt like he couldn’t breathe in again. 

Nishinoya, bowed low, didn’t….couldn’t, respond.

His shoulders were still shaking. 

Asahi started to cry. 

Something warm touch his hand and Asahi jerked. He looked around, trying not to make any more sounds because he wanted to be brave for Nishinoya though tears were rolling heavily down his face. But it was just Suga looking at him kindly and taking Asahi’s big hand in his. 

The old soldier began clipping in earnest now, the shock of that first, stark line delivered. Asahi winced through it all; it was too rough, the clippers biting too hard. He could see beads of blood within the cropped short hair being revealed on Nishinoya’s head as his tall, proud spikes fell to the floor. He was trembling hard and his hand was sweating but Suga held on the whole time, squeezing softly. 

Asahi could imagine what Suga would say, if they’d been allowed to talk. Nishinoya was strong. He would survive this. But the thought wouldn’t take hold, Asahi was too crazed with distress. From the angle his head was being held at Asahi could tell that the only thing Nishinoya would be able to see was his knees on that hard grey floor, and his shaven hair falling unevenly around him.

The old soldier’s hand snaked too close to Nishinoya’s far ear, and the clippers snarled hungrily across his skin. A line of red appeared and Nishinoya made a sound despite himself, some sort of cross between a hiss of pain and a dog snarling angrily out of the side of its mouth. The private shook him once, hard, and again Nishinoya took control of himself. The clipping continued.

Suga’s hand seized tight on Asahi’s, and he found himself squeezing back. 

It seemed to take forever, but also no time at all. Finally, they were done with their damned work. The soldier twisted Nishinoya face this way and that, checking to see if he’d got everything. As his head turned Asahi could see a thin line of blood running down from Nishinoya’s ear to his jaw. When the old soldier stepped back, losing interest in his prisoner and picking hair from the teeth of the clippers, the private threw Nishinoya down hard. It was sudden and unexpected, and if it wasn’t for being the best Libero in their prefecture Nishinoya likely would’ve hit the floor hard and with his face. As it was he just got his hands between him, his right quicker then his left, which must’ve been numb and sore from being held up behind him for so long.

There was no oxygen in Asahi. His heart didn’t even beat. If an airstrike had gone off around him he wouldn’t have taken his eyes off the line of Nishinoya’s back, and his grey, freshly-clipped head. 

Nishinoya took a moment on the floor like he did sometimes after taking a heavy hit from a powerful ace. Like he’d saved a deadly serve and just needed a moment to reorientate himself in the world.

Then, true to form, he got his hands and his legs beneath himself and pushed himself up onto his knees. Clipped bits of hair were sticking to the palms of his hands.  
Slowly, Nishinoya raised his right hand and gingerly touched his bald head. He rubbed it experimentally. Blood from his ear slid across his wrist and he lowered his hand to look at it. As he held his palm in front of his face it trembled almost imperceptibly. 

Nishinoya looked back up at the team. His face was almost set in determination, but not quite. The was a crack in it, a scratch on a window-pane, exposing disbelief. A glazed over sort of wonder that his hair was just gone. 

He was looking at Daichi again, but then his eyes crossed over to where Suga was gripping Asahi’s hand. An uncharacteristic grimness fell over his expression..

At a signal from the Captain the private grabbed Nishinoya by the upper arm, the left again. Startled Nishinoya made another unintentional noise of pain as he was yanked to his feet then thrown back in line. Asahi jumped, terrified for one heart stopping moment that Nishinoya wasn’t going to get his arms up this time, that he would be driven head first into the wall. Suga all but threw Asahi’s hand away so he could turn to catch him. 

But of course reliable Nishinoya did catch himself, it was just Asahi got a hand on his shoulder to balance him too. Leaning on the wall, face darkened by his own shadow, Nishinoya turned slightly towards Asahi and looked into his wet eyes. 

“It’s okay, Asahi,” he said quietly. 

Asahi’s chest was quivering with the distressed noises he wouldn’t let himself make, and beneath his hand he felt Nishinoya’s muscles gather and loosen.

Nishinoya looked down. The line of blood from his ear was the brightest thing on his small, pale face.

“It’s just hair,” Nishinoya said.

Then he was turning back to take his place in line and Asahi had to lower his hand. 

The private and the old soldier made their way to Daichi’s end of the line. Now that the theatrics were done and the point made, they were getting down to the routine business of shaving everyone. They didn’t take Daichi out of line, and because Daichi bowed without issue for them they did not make him get down on his knees. Asahi had actually seen Daichi with a shaved head once or twice in the past, generally in the summer. There was no shove value when the clippers revealed that first line of short hair. 

Another warm touch on his hand, but this time from his right. Instinctively, Asahi opened his hand to let Nishinoya take it and looked around to his friend. Now that he’d started he couldn’t stop himself from crying, and he was crying so hard his nose was beginning to block. Asahi knew he must look ridiculous, the big bearded boy who couldn’t make himself be brave, when the old man with the clippers hadn’t even touched him yet. 

He couldn’t meet Nishinoya’s eyes. Even when Nishinoya squeezed his hand and whispered “Hey,” Asahi kept his gaze on the dirty floor.

“Hey,” Nishinoya said again and ducked his head. He was so small, and Asahi so tall, that even with his face turned down Nishinoya could wedge his way into his line of sight. Asahi allowed Nishinoya to catch his gaze. His grey, bald head was strange and shocking, but his face still looked like him. His huge eyes and sharp eyebrows and quick mouth. Asahi’s breath stuttered a bit as he inhaled. Nishinoya gave him a very, very small smile, and rubbed his thumb on the side of Asahi’s hand. 

“I’m sorry that frightened you, Asahi-san,” he said softly. 

Looking at his friend, looking at his dear, best friend, who the soldiers had shaved and who had blood on the side of his face and who was looking at him so kindly, Asahi found that he still couldn’t stop himself from crying.


End file.
